The mental health–politics nexus: How mental health trajectories from adolescence to midlife shape political attitudes and voting patterns

The paper, in plain language

Three decades from symptom to ballot

With Sam Fluit, Kinga Bierwiaczonek and Tilmann von Soest, I used the population-based Young in Norway cohort to trace how internalizing problems — depression and anxiety symptoms — and externalizing problems from adolescence onward relate to twelve political preferences measured in midlife. Growth modelling identified distinct trajectories for each problem type.

What the trajectories predict

Elevated problems of either kind went with lower political and social trust decades later. The directional findings are the striking part: elevated internalizing problems in adolescence — regardless of how they later developed — were associated with more left-wing political profiles, whereas persistently elevated externalizing problems were associated with stronger right-wing profiles. Political orientation, the data suggest, is partly developmental.

Why it matters

This paper extends a line of work using the same three-decade cohort — self-esteem trajectories predicting opposition to social equality, loneliness trajectories predicting conspiracist worldviews — that together makes one argument: how life treats you at fifteen leaves fingerprints on how you vote at forty-five. Polarization debates focus on media diets and identity; the developmental route into politics deserves a place beside them. These are observational associations, not causal claims, and this summary rests on the paper's published abstract.